GTK4 work and 5.8 Dec release

[TurboGit]

As you all know the current code base has received a huge amount of changes to prepare the Gtk4 transition. The work is not finished, but that's not the point of this message.

Some time ago I said that if Darktable was not stable/ready for Dec release we will skip it and release 5.8 on June 2027. I'm still open to this decision.

But having used Darktable recently I do fell that all important bugs/glitches have been fixed and current Darktable on master is usable and all feature are working. Is that right? Do I miss something? Are we ready for 5.8 on Dec?

@wpferguson @zisoft @jenshannoschwalm @masterpiga @victoryforce @ralfbrown @kofa73 @MStraeten @Phemisters @da-phil @andriiryzhkov @piratenpanda : you are the recent active contributors, your view on this is important.

TIA

[piratenpanda]

My honest opinion is that menus and pop-ups feel very buggy in this half transitioned state we are in right now. E.g right click on the collections, new flexi mask pop-ups appearing somewhere completely different on the screen. Maybe we should collect a list of things that need a functioning workaround if the decision is made to release 5.8 as planned

[TurboGit]

new flexi mask pop-ups appearing somewhere completely different on the screen

This works for me.

[masterpiga]

Maybe @piratenpanda is referring to such things?

#22644 (comment)

[piratenpanda]

Bildschirmaufzeichnung.vom.2026-10-17.19-43-13.mp4

happens for me when right clicking and selecting "compose"

[masterpiga]

Are you on Wayland? It is probably #22630

[piratenpanda]

yes, thanks

[da-phil]

I'll take care, already have a fix which works for me, will raise a PR soon.

[jenshannoschwalm]

Maybe i use dt pretty "conservative", not having tested the new masking interface yet and not using the AI things.

But besides that it feels very stable for me.

A list of pending issues might help ...

[zisoft]

pop-ups appearing somewhere completely different on the screen.

This is not acceptable, indeed.

For the new popup menus in general: They are not as comfortable as we are used to with gtk3, but they are working and do what they should do.

We cannot stay stuck on gtk3, the migration to gtk4 is a must.
It is a huge amount of work and we should clearly communicate that some awkward things are the price to pay during the long transition.

I always use current master for my photography collection. For me, it is stable.

[da-phil]

We cannot stay stuck on gtk3, the migration to gtk4 is a must.

I believe you are right, we shouldn't drag this migration over to another major release. Long-term we should also follow the vision of Ansel, getting to a state where darktable business logic is completely free of GTK types and code, allowing to compile a darktable headless core without any GTK dependencies.

The question is who would be willing to support with the gtk4 migration and also coordinate the remaining work? At least I cannot commit on it, only support sporadically.